Thread.

@hughhewitt has this to say about those of us who believe the president should be impeached.

"Whatever the impeachment chorus is, it isn’t principled, it isn’t concerned with justice and it isn’t concerned with the future."

Some thoughts

Hewitt writes that many impeachment proponents have “Trump Derangement Syndrome” and the claims to know what motivates them – and what doesn’t.

“Of concern for the country, well, concern for that part of the country they don’t inhabit, there is none.”

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On Thursday morning, The Dispatch published our first-ever editorial calling for the impeachment & removal of President Trump.

It's a principled case, driven by a desire for justice & w/concerns for the future (immediate and distant) at its core.

3/

https://t.co/RTvzFmU1F2
People can disagree with our case. Some folks we respect surely do. We’ve lost some members over it – including of the Founding Lifetime variety at $1500 a pop.

We’d gladly publish the same editorial again today. It’s become more urgent – not less – that Trump is removed.

4/
Hewitt chose not to engage our arguments, opting instead to claim it’s all “a punitive mission based on cable talking heads ‘hot takes.’” He insists, w/o evidence, that to those who favor impeachment the views of Trump’s 74 million voters “do not matter.”

Well then.

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On June 8, 2016, Hewitt argued that keeping Donald Trump as the GOP nominee was like “ignoring stage-four cancer.” He said: “"You can't do it, you gotta attack it."

6/

https://t.co/6gM2xj7vdJ
He wanted the Republican Party to change its rules to block Trump, suggesting that if the GOP nominates Trump, he could be the party’s last nominee.

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https://t.co/btOsTZ8a79
A week later, to the day, Hewitt reversed himself. In a Washington Post column, he complained about “endless talk of a mutiny within the GOP” and portrayed Trump as the savior of the Republican Party.

8/

https://t.co/LnfWsD5903
Asked later about the abrupt reversal, Hewitt initially said: “I didn’t compare Donald Trump to stage four cancer.” He added that he was frustrated by Trump’s attacks on a judge, but Trump had stopped attacking the judge and framed the race as a “binary choice.”

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You can watch his full explanation, here:

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https://t.co/S1q4KRfWit
Hewitt left out an important detail. He’d received an email from his boss, Salem Radio CEO Edward Atsinger, that was “a very well stated case for supporting the GOP nominee because we have to beat Hillary,” according to Salem’s SVP Phil Boyce.

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Atsinger said that his email to Hewitt was the basis of Hewitt’s Washington Post column. “"Wow he took a lot from my email to him and turned it into an article," he said, according to an email obtained by CNN.

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https://t.co/tAYaS0eZZe
Since Trump was elected, Hewitt's been an enthusiastic supporter, couching occasional criticism in a day-to-defense of Trump’s policies & a rationalization of his behavior. He’s an aggressive critic of Trump-skeptics who hold the views he did before the memo from his boss.
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Hewitt claims now he wants somber reflection and an end to the divisions of recent years. He was apparently less concerned about division when he had Kurt Schlichter regularly appear on and guest host his radio show.

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Who is Kurt Schlichter? One of the most divisive figures on populist right. Like Hewitt, he’s a onetime Trump critic who now argues with the passion of a convert. And then goes much further.

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See here: https://t.co/j0hVX4bekl

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For more than four years, Hewitt has normalized Trump’s reckless presidency. He played a major role in deceiving those 74 million Trump voters and now claims that it’s others who don’t care about them?

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The best way to show concern for Trump voters – for any voters – is to tell them the truth. While Hewitt is busy portraying himself as the spokesman for those voters, as the voice of their concerns, he’s been abetting the con.

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The president of the United States attempted to overturn an election based on a series of lies. He said the election would be rigged. It wasn’t. He told his supporters the election was stolen. It wasn’t. He threatened the GA SecState to change the certified results.

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The president and his lawyer were still trying to block the counting of electoral votes during and *after* the attack on the Capitol by his supporters. He worked to stop the peaceful transfer of power in the greatest representative government the world has ever known.

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We have an acting attorney general, an acting SecDef. Many top natsec officials have left their posts. Trump's team has blocked crucial military and national security briefings for the incoming administration. Top military officials are alarmed at our vulnerability.

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So, yes, Donald Trump needs to be impeached and removed as soon as possible. For reasons of principle and justice, out of concern for the present and the future.

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Contra @hughhewitt, making such an argument isn’t driven by Trump Derangement Syndrome. It isn't in any way “anti-American.”

And I’ll look elsewhere for lectures on principle.

23/
Time to go fishing.

24/24

More from Politics

My piece in the NY Times today: "the Trump administration is denying applications submitted to the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services at a rate 37 percent higher than the Obama administration did in 2016."

Based on this analysis: "Denials for immigration benefits—travel documents, work permits, green cards, worker petitions, etc.—increased 37 percent since FY 2016. On an absolute basis, FY 2018 will see more than about 155,000 more denials than FY 2016."
https://t.co/Bl0naOO0sh


"This increase in denials cannot be credited to an overall rise in applications. In fact, the total number of applications so far this year is 2 percent lower than in 2016. It could be that the higher denial rate is also discouraging some people from applying at all.."

Thanks to @gsiskind for his insightful comments. The increase in denials, he said, is “significant enough to make one think that Congress must have passed legislation changing the requirements. But we know they have not.”

My conclusion:

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